How Systems Thinking Helps Leaders Avoid Bad Sustainability Decisions

Companies today are navigating a volatile and contradictory landscape: ESG commitments are under political attack in some regions while mandated by regulators in others. Supply chains are being upended by extreme weather and climate-driven disruptions. Geopolitical uncertainty—from escalating conflicts to trade tensions—is reshaping global operations overnight. Meanwhile, sustainability teams are asked to deliver transformational results within governance structures built for efficiency, not resilience.

Tima Bansal’s recent article in Forbes, How Systems Thinking Helps Leaders Avoid Bad Decisions, articulates what many of us have been seeing for years: smart executives are making bad decisions not because they lack intelligence or data, but because they are using outdated mental models in a deeply interconnected world.

Here’s the hard truth: sustainability is a systems challenge. And that means our tools, strategies, and mindsets need to evolve accordingly.

🔄 Optimization isn't enough. Solving for one part of the system—emissions, costs, compliance—can create ripple effects elsewhere that worsen the very risks we’re trying to manage.

📉 Control is an illusion. Trying to squeeze certainty out of complexity leads to brittle systems that crack under pressure. What we need instead is adaptability, feedback loops, and distributed decision-making.

⏳ Short-term wins often come at long-term costs. Systems thinking enables organizations to hold dual time horizons: navigating immediate demands while strategically shaping more resilient futures.

The work SSC is doing focuses on helping companies apply systems thinking to their sustainability strategies before crisis forces their hand. That means equipping leaders to see interconnections, anticipate unintended consequences, and build adaptive capacity into every layer of their organization.

We are living through a profound shift—from linear to circular, from siloed to integrated, from reactive to regenerative. Systems thinking isn’t a luxury in this landscape. It’s a leadership imperative.

Let’s stop searching for the “right” answer and start cultivating better systems.